Deadly Assets (12 page)

She doesn't look like she's trying to corner me,
he thought.

But she knows the proper terminology. Better be careful, Matty . . .

“Fair question, for which I have a fair answer. Let me say, first of all, Honor, Integrity, Service—that's our police department's motto. I believe devoutly in it. I took my oath to protect the city, protect its residents, and uphold the law and the United States Constitution. To do that, you have to embrace honor and integrity and service.”

He saw nodding in the crowd.

“An Officer-Involved Shooting, or OIS,” he went on, “is when a police officer, either on duty or off, discharges his or her firearm, either intentionally or accidentally. Each year, among our seven thousand–plus officers, there's an average of fifty Officer-Involved Shootings, with about ten of those resulting in the officer killing the bad guy. It's important to note that every OIS death in the last decade has been found to be righteous.”

“Righteous?” a male, who looked, and sounded, like he was of Polish stock, asked.

Payne remembered him as one of the six whose hands remained up when he asked if anyone had been a crime victim.

“Justifiable,” Payne said. “Proper.”

“Then the bastard had it coming!” the male blurted.

“Kuba!” the olive-skinned female next to him said.

“If you'll forgive my French, sir,” Kuba added, smiling.

Payne forced back a grin.

“Everyone makes choices, and some are fatal ones,” he said. “Okay, so fifty Officer-Involved Shootings is a very low number considering (a) that there're every day about ten thousand calls to nine-one-one asking for police assistance and (b) that the bad guys are quick to wave weapons when police arrive on the scene.”

“That's what happened to me,” Kuba said. “The bastard . . . sorry . . . the bad guy robbed me at gunpoint when I was waiting for a SEPTA bus in West Philly.”

“You didn't get hurt?” Payne said.

“No, sir,” Kuba said, shaking his head. He glanced at Andy Radcliffe and added, “Luckily.”

Andy acknowledged that with a nod.

“You were lucky,” Payne said, paused for a moment, then went on: “All right, so after an OIS, the case gets sent to the district attorney's office to determine that the shooting was within the framework of Pennsylvania state law. There's also a police department investigation, one separate from the DA's and conducted by the Use of Force Review Board following the DA's decision. The Use of Force Review Board is made up of department heavy hitters—the deputy commissioners from Patrol Operations, Office of Professional Responsibility, Organizational Services, and Major Investigations. They determine whether or not department procedures and policies were followed and if there should be disciplinary charges, or maybe training, or even changing department policies.”

“What about CPOC?” a male who looked to be of Asian descent said.

Payne looked at him, nodded, then addressed the group: “Everyone familiar with the Citizens Police Oversight Committee? It's exactly as its name suggests. Made up of five citizens appointed to represent all citizens, CPOC offers valuable suggestions to the police department, generally through the city council. Its members, who are not sworn officers or prosecutors, are not able to make professional investigations of an OIS, or for that matter any other official activity in the department.”

After a moment, the dark-haired woman raised her hand again.

“So,” she said, “you're saying that's ten bad guys killed by an officer each year in Philly? When the overall murder rate averages one a day? I don't mean any offense by this, either, but it's remarkable you haven't shot more than you have, Sergeant Payne.”

Payne looked at her a moment, then noticed everyone's eyes on him.

Here it comes, Matty ol' boy—that sounds uncomfortably close to the impossible-to-answer question of: “So, sir, have you stopped beating your wife?”

“Yes! I mean, no! I mean . . .”

He avoided answering by digging into his coat pocket. He produced some folded sheets of paper, flipped to the second one, and handed it to Andy Radcliffe.

“This is the most recent Philadelphia Murder/Shooting Analysis,” Payne announced. “Andy, how about you read the intro, and I'll then get into the numbers.”

Andy looked at the sheet, then cleared his throat, and began: “‘The FBI Uniform Crime Reporting Program establishes all guidelines and procedures for the submission of crime data to the State Police UCR. Murders are counted at the time Homicide investigators determine that, after investigation, there in fact has been an intentional killing of a human being by another. Clearances of murders occur when at least one person suspected of committing the murder is taken into police custody for prosecution. Clearance rates are determined by taking the total number of murder clearances for the year and dividing that number into the number of murders counted for that same period. Clearance rates are currently averaging fifty percent.'”

He looked up at Payne, who then looked at the group.

“Any questions about that?” Payne said.

He saw heads shaking; there were no verbal responses.

“Okay, let's talk about who's involved in these homicides,” he then said. “Of those murdered, nearly ninety percent are male, sixty percent of that aged eighteen to thirty-four, seventy-five percent if you look at eighteen to forty-four. And of all those killed, seventy-five percent are African-American.

“The department's Twenty-second District—North Philly, Broad Street to the Schuylkill River, headquartered at Seventeenth and Montgomery—gets the dubious honor of handling the most murders citywide, one in ten. But the Twenty-fourth and -fifth and the Twelfth and Thirty-fifth and -ninth are right behind it.”

Andy Radcliff said, “That's pretty much anywhere but Center City.”

“That's correct. But Center City certainly isn't immune. Now, seventy-five-point-eight percent of homicides happen outside. No day is really any better or worse than another, although Saturday, Sunday, and Monday nights edge highest.”

“Why not Friday?” a voice called out.

Payne shrugged.

“There's really not a lot of difference. Friday rates eleven percent versus sixteen percent for each Saturday, Sunday, Monday. A third of those murders clock in—or clock out, as the case may be—between twenty-hundred and twenty-four-hundred hours. About one in four are murdered after that, twenty-four-hundred to oh-four-hundred.”

“Midnight, the witching hour,” Andy Radcliffe said. “Small wonder the Homicide guys on the Last Out shift are the busiest.”

“And why they don't get much sleep,” Payne said, “considering they chase the leads night and day until they catch them or the trail goes cold. As for when the fewest murders occur, it's the period from oh-eight-hundred to twelve-hundred.”

“Late morning. They must be sleeping in then,” a female who looked to have Irish traits said.

There were chuckles in the group.

“That,” Kuba said in a stage whisper, “or getting cozy with their bitches.”

That triggered loud laughter.

Payne shook his head, but he grinned and then went on: “Almost half are categorized as the result of an argument. A distant second, around ten to twelve percent, are listed as ‘Drugs' and about the same number are marked ‘Unknown.'”

“Wouldn't there be a lot of crossover there?” the tall, thoughtful black male said. “I mean, a lot of those arguments have to be drug-related.”

Payne nodded. “No doubt. There could've been drugs involved earlier, then a later argument triggered the killing. Fighting over territory is a prime example.” He paused, then went on: “And ‘triggered' is somewhat appropriate, as the cause of death by far is gunshots. More than eighty percent. Knives come in at just shy of ten percent. After that it's blunt force trauma and strangling. Anyone want to take a stab, so to speak, at when those numbers change dramatically?”

He glanced around the group, then his eyes fell on Andy Radcliffe.

“I've already read the report . . .” Andy said.

“Then you won't be taking a stab.”

Andy nodded. “Okay, when it's domestic murder cases. Knife and gun use are essentially equal.”

“Right. There were just over a hundred domestic-related murders over the last five years, and a knife or other sharp blade—scissors, say, or a cardboard box cutter—was used as often as a firearm. Interestingly, the numbers of male and female victims of domestic murders were also about equal.”

“Equal?” Kuba parroted, his tone incredulous. “You said the other homicide figures showed some eighty percent of the victims were male. And here women committed half of the killings?”

“‘Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned,'” Payne recited, making dramatic stage-actor sweeps with his arms, “‘Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned.' From Act Three, Scene Eight of ol' Billy Congreve's seventeenth-century play
The Mourning Bride
.”

“How do you remember stuff like that so quick and easy?” Andy Radcliffe said, smiling.

“Andy, I figure if that was written some three hundred years ago, and it still makes sense, there must be something to it,” Payne said. “You might wish to write this down: One should strive to remember all things relevant that could see one's . . . posterior . . . kicked. Including, as this particular stat bears out, a furious wife, girlfriend . . .”

“Or girlfriends,” Kuba said. “Lots of baby mamas out there getting angry when their man wanders off with another baby mama.”

There were chuckles.

“Okay,” Payne said, “let's wind this up. Eight out of ten murder victims had at least one prior arrest. Twenty percent, amazingly, had at least eleven priors, the vast majority being robbery, followed by murder.”

“
Eleven?
Robbers and murderers let back out on the street?” the Puerto Rican female said. “Thank you very much, court system.”

“And those are just the victims?” Kuba said. “Maybe we should thank the shooters for taking them out.”

“Yeah,” the female next to him said. “Who are they?”

“Curiously, pretty much the same demographic, just more so,” Payne said. “Males at ninety-three percent. Eighty-three percent black, seventeen white. Half are age eighteen to twenty-four—which is where the Survive to See Twenty-five saying comes from, meaning you've beat the odds—or seventy-five percent if you go to age eighteen to thirty-four. And more than ninety percent had prior arrests. Of the total, a third had one to three priors, and a quarter had eleven or more.

“And as far as which guns are used, nine-millimeter is by far the round of choice, with .40 cal and .45 cal being used about half as often. A bit more than one in three wind up shooting multiple shots, hitting multiple parts of the victim's body. But, following that, curiously, one in four take only a head shot.”

“Nice,” Kuba said, his tone disgusted. “Probably taking their nine and squeezing off the head shot point-blank after making them get on their knees.”

“Execution style is not at all uncommon,” Payne said. “It sends a message.”

Kuba grunted.

The group was quiet a long moment.

“So, Sergeant Payne,” the tall, thoughtful black male said, “using all that real data, is it safe to paint this picture of the typical murderer and victim? That they're mostly black males between eighteen and thirty-four years of age with at least one prior arrest for robbery and that the crime is committed somewhere between Saturday at eight
P.M.
and Sunday at four
A.M.
with multiple shots from a nine-millimeter pistol?”

“Well put. Unfortunately, that is the case—the homicide numbers don't lie,” Payne said, then glanced at Andy. “And we haven't even touched on the numbers of attempted murder of innocent people.”

Kuba whistled lightly as he shook his head.

“I was damn lucky I only got robbed,” he said.

[ THREE ]

“But here's the kicker on this Kensington carjacking,” Kerry Rapier said, pointing toward the image of the crime scene on the ECC wall.

Payne looked at it and said, “You mean as in: Where's Waldo?”

Rapier snorted.

“Exactly. The uniform who was first at the scene reported an enormous amount of blood on the sidewalk. But no body. And no shell casings—”

“No spent rounds? Then the doer used a revolver,” Payne said.

“That, or the shooter actually stuck around and cleaned the scene of all his spent rounds.”

“Yeah, right. Possible. But it'd be a miracle.”

“Police Radio broadcasted a Flash info with the description of the car—a late-model VW Jetta—but dollars to doughnuts it's probably already across the river in Jersey or Delaware. Or about to be.”

“Maybe Waldo's not dead. Maybe he's wounded and in hiding. With wounds to the chest and throat, there'd damn sure be a blood trail.”

Rapier shook his head. “More like a blood river. According to Moss, his buddy Waldo—
Billy Chester—
was killed. When Moss broke down talking to the transit cop, he said that right before he had to run for his life, it was clear that his buddy was dead.”

Payne reached toward the conference table, grabbed one of the telephones, and punched in a number.

“It's Sergeant Payne,” he said after a moment. “Who was on the Wheel when this carjacking case in Kensington came in?” His eyebrows went up as he listened, then he said, “And where's the kid, this Dan Moss, who reported it?” Then, after another moment, added, “Okay, thanks,” and replaced the receiver in its cradle.

He looked at Rapier and said, “This should be good. Chuck Whaley is on his way to the scene. He couldn't find his ass with both hands even if he were spotted one cheek. And the Moss kid is in Homicide. He gave Whaley his statement and is now waiting for one of his parents to show up.”